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Originally Posted by RScott  I'm sure if I had posted saying that I was in the Atlanta area, looking for audio post work, I would have gotten the same response, move -- there is nothing in my area.
Maybe I'm just a lucky guy, but I'm currently working as the audio post guy for an independent production house in the Atlanta area, just a few years after graduating college.
How did I get this job? Experience helps. For me that meant having worked on location during student and grad student film shoots recording audio and also doing audio post-production for many grad student films. This sort of work you can find readily. Many laments of the post forum are over the abundance of jobs with no/lo/deferred payment. May be a good place to find somewhat interesting projects for your reel while working in a semi-professional environment. Having your own setup helps a ton.
After having a reel, you need to get that reel in front of the right people. That means people looking to hire. By chance, a client at a family member's bank owns a ProTools resale store in town and it turns out students from my college make a decent amount of business for him. He took some time to give me some names of in-town businesses he had worked with recently who might be interested in a post audio guy.
That got my reel into the hands of people who wanted audio work.
Hit the phone book, internet and anywhere else you can find the addresses and phone numbers of production houses in town. Any business that may have ties to film and video is worth a shot. If they aren't interested directly, they probably know the business in the area well and could point you toward other spots.
If you have the time to burn, try to find some internships developing skills you don't already have, like recording for film or music, radio show/commercial production, voice-over recording, etc. Being a one-man-show for audio needs is a big plus.
As you build up your reel of small projects it will open you up to bigger projects and will expand your client and professional contact list.
Best wishes and good luck. |
I second that, regarding location. I'm in Atlanta also and have done well in this market. Chicago seems perfectly adequate, unless you really want to do Hollywood Blockbusters, in which case you know where you need to be. But the industry as a whole is becoming far less location specific. The internet and bandwidth leaps are shrinking the world. We've all now done plenty of projects with people we've never met or been in the same city with. Its all about talent, word-of-mouth and professionalism.
Oh yeah, and why the hell would you want to move from Chicago? I think its my in my top 3 cities I'd love to live in. Too bad I've established myself in ATL. ATL blows, but at least the weather's nice.
Good luck to you. Its a fun business. Sure beats ditch-digging.